NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar: ‘Peter was getting extraordinarily rich… Let Peter share a little bit with Paul’

It’s not an election Budget, it’s not populist. Maybe that’s why it has not pleased anybody. There is certainly no splurge. There is no attempt to win electoral support. In this context, the challenges are what the Budget points out— farmers’ plight, and we must accept that. And this is where the Budget has made a very important statement — that attention must shift from focussing on production and agricultural output to the farmer’s income. Farmers’ income has to be addressed now. Doubling of it by 2022, I think is possible. We have started 10 pilot projects in NITI (Aayog) to try and demonstrate that.

Farmers’ income must be raised and that implies productivity increase, income increase and livelihood improvement in the rural sector. That’s the key. Unless you do that, you cannot get sustained high rates of growth in this country.

Saroja Sirisena, Consul General of Sri Lanka in Mumbai with Vivek Phansalkar Additional Director General of Police (ACB)

On the ambitious health insurance scheme

The other challenge is to implement and roll out the ambitious heath insurance scheme. It is a complete myth, false propaganda and nonsense to call this scheme underfunded. This is something that has been in preparation for the last five months at NITI Aayog. People have done their sums. The premium payments for bulk procurement are nowhere near the cost of individual health procurement, so the costs are much lower and the Budget has sufficient provisions. Now the challenge is its rollout and implementation. How quickly and how soon can we do that, that’s it.

On employment

It’s not employment, it’s the quality of employment. The sight of graduates wearing gowns, selling pakodas says, look we want something more than what is on offer. The aspirations of our young people is far ahead of the reality on the ground.

Rajiv Kumar was presented with a portrait of him done by The Indian Express Chief Designer Subrata Dhar

On robbing Peter to pay Paul

The LTCG (proposal to tax long-term capital gains), everybody here must know, was long in coming. It had been an anomaly, a distortion of a very basic tenet of economics that you have to tax all asset classes equally. In fact, it’s still not the case and I hope that we will get to that. Given the state of the real estate after demonetisation and GST, it is important to at least try and make an effort that some of the household savings go back to real estate which is now really short of juice. This vacuum cleaning behaviour of the stock market which has happened… this correction had to be made. I don’t think there is a question of robbing Peter here in any case. Peter was getting extraordinarily rich and getting windfall gains so just let Peter share a little bit with Paul.

On the National Medical Commission Bill

The National Medical Commission Bill talks only about expanding the supply of doctors and nurses and facilities. The purpose of that Bill was that IMA has created an artificial scarcity of specialists and doctors and nurses, and had created a corrupt scene there. Which is what we wanted to remove. And which is what is not going to be easy because of all the vested interests. There is a huge nexus here and you have to prevent that from happening. Which is why the first step in that direction is for the Bill to have gone to the standing committee. It’s an incredible Bill. It’s a game changer for improving the supply of medical professionals in this country.

On the cess on education

This cess, as was announced, is for the social sectors and not just for education. So that’s one change. The good news here is that the NITI Aayog index — the school education quality index is now ready and has been tested and will be rolled out very soon. We will do it for all the states and they will compete on it. It’s a real time portal and the idea is to get the states to start competing on the government school quality index and delivery of school education. We are preparing to go back to PISA (Programme for International Students Assessment). Once two of our best states participated in it and both of them came last. But we are going back to that. Along with this index and the figures, you will see improvement in the quality of basic education. The very big, real issue is that this is largely a state subject and Central government intervention at that level is just very difficult. What we have done instead is — ramped up the scholarship programmes. That’s something the Central government can do. But to intervene at the level of primary education and secondary education is not something that looks very doable, but nonetheless we can try.

The audience at the Express Adda held at Vivanta by Taj- President, Mumbai

On addressing regional disparity challenges

The challenge method that has been used is for very specific schemes. On the other hand, all our centrally sponsored schemes still have a division of 90:10 for the special states and for the hill states. You also know that the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMJSY) was in favour of the eastern and rural districts. The Northeast has attracted a lot of resources and attention from the Central government because there is a non-lapsable fund that has been created.

My understanding is that with the meagre resources that NITI has compared with the Planning Commission —and by the way I do need to emphasise that NITI Aayog has nothing to do with the Planning Commission, it is in no way a successor. It is a brand new idea but some resources that they have and we have, have been distributed much more, relatively to the poorer states.

On NITI Aayog and its future
NITI Aayog is a great idea because this is one organisation that cuts across silos, which has been the bane of the government for a long time. It has the ability to connect the dots. It has the potential to create accountability as was never before in the system. I call it an action tank, not a think tank. What we do is to be completely open to ideas and put them into systems and follow up. It can be a major changemaker. We can achieve a development state in this country and close the gulf between the private and the public. The worst thing I found in the last five months is the sheer acceptance of my colleagues, not all, that we are all like that in the government. We are not like that and NITI Aayog can ensure we are not like that.

(From left to right) Bindu Rana Kapoor; Raakhe Kapoor Tandon, Founder and Director, ART Affordable Housing Finance; Roshini Kapoor, Co-founder TTS:IO and ED, ART Capital (India) Private Limited

On information sharing

This country had the world’s best data system upto the mid-70s and we have allowed it to deteriorate without a whimper. Policy making, without hard evidence, is shooting in the dark and that’s not done. The amazing news that I just discovered is on potatoes. There is a whole statistical imaging system developed in Shimla by the Potato Research Institute. They do three trials and the final estimate comes six weeks before harvest but lo and behold, it is confidential to the government. But at least we got the advance information, we could do something, give advance information to farmers, it would help.

I will do something about it. My predecessor also worked on job data. The first household survey is now in the field for collecting employment data. The first result will come in October. The payroll data and household data will soon be out. The employment will soon not be a matter of conjecture.

On giving access to private parties

This society works on mistrust, it’s across every constituency. I think we perhaps enjoy creating more mistrust because that serves some interest. Rather than creating coherence across a diverse pluralistic society like ours, we tend to exaggerate the differences. How will this go, I am not sure. Maybe this is one place where the private sector could make a start, which is to improve its credibility so that it could be trusted by the people of this country more. How will this go, I am not sure. The Chinese have done it by keeping the word mistrust out of their vocabulary. It is a real question, we can try and do it in some other way. It will be very good on the part of the civil society to take the first step and I am sure the government will follow.